


picking up the pieces

by ninemoons42



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aftermath, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tangled together the day after they seal the Breach, Mako begins to weep for the cost of the war, and Raleigh is there with her, every step of the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	picking up the pieces

Someone is whispering in med bay, and Mako lifts her head from an oblivious Raleigh’s shoulder carefully, very carefully. Most of the time he’s awake when she’s awake and he sleeps only after she’s fallen asleep. This is something rare, and she wants him to recover because physically speaking, he’s been through a lot more than she has. He needs to get better, so she won’t have to be alone in facing the endless rounds of debrief, so she won’t have to speak by herself when the media finally knocks down the door to demand the story of what it was precisely that they’d done.

What she knows is in bits and pieces. The acrid stench of Anteverse atmosphere, like spilled blood and burned iron. A sun like an eyeball, malevolent glare. Pressure and heat like attacks on her very human and very frail body, crushed and set alight at the same time.

She doesn’t know how Raleigh kept his head; all she knows is that he did, and that he somehow remembered to come back up to her, because it would have torn them both apart to be stranded on opposite sides of a closing door.

She shakes the terrible memories away and the movement catches the attention of the two women at the door: one is wearing med bay scrubs, and the other is in a grimy jumpsuit of some kind. The smiles on their faces are blinding, though, and Mako can’t help but smile back, close-lipped.

She almost wishes she could begrudge them those smiles. She almost wishes she could tell them that people are dead and lost. 

She wants to tell them that they should also remember to mourn.

She keeps her mouth shut, and she clings to Raleigh, enough that he stirs and kisses her forehead and whispers her name. “Mako,” he says, softly, almost soundlessly, against her scalp.

“Raleigh,” she says. “You should go back to sleep.” Half admonishing. Half a plea. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.

It’s no use.

Raleigh blinks and opens his eyes fully, and he looks at her and his face falls into a complicated expression, sympathetic and sad and sweet all at once.

But all he does is say her name, and say, after that, “Tell me. Please tell me. I want to know. I promise I won’t judge.”

And she knows that every word is truth, but she also knows that she will diminish in his eyes because of this tale.

“No you won’t,” Raleigh says, though she hasn’t begun.

So she starts. She hesitates over certain words, but she forces herself to speak. “How can they be happy,” she says, breathless with the emotion that sits like weights on each word, “how can they all be laughing? Didn’t they hear their last words - didn’t they hear that there was an _explosion_?”

“We felt that explosion more than we heard it,” Raleigh murmurs, encouragingly.

Mako closes her eyes, holds on to whatever parts of Raleigh she can reach: his upper arm, and his wrist. The impact of the sword being driven into the shifting seabed beneath them, the two of them working together so Gipsy Danger could fall to one knee.

The last words she ever heard from Stacker, still reverberating in her head.

_“We have to clear a path for the lady.”_

After she tells him that Raleigh goes still for a long, long moment, before he engulfs her in a hug. He’s all but crushing her to him.

Mako clings to him as hard as he does to her, until the muscles in her arms actually start to ache from the effort.

“I don’t even know whether he was referring to you or to Gipsy,” Raleigh whispers.

She shakes her head. Part of her wants to know, because if she can ask Stacker about it, that means he’s alive in the first place.

Part of her doesn’t want to know.

“Do you want those words to refer to the two of you? Both you and her?”

She shakes her head, and the movement is short and sharp and still not enough to express her emotions. “ _Wakaranai_ [1],” she whispers, desperately. “I - I can’t - ”

Someone bites back a sob. It’s not her.

She levers herself up from Raleigh’s chest. There are tears in his eyes. “I’ve been - well, not precisely where you are right now. But I understand. I think I know a little of how you feel.”

Mako blanches and blushes and looks away.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Raleigh murmurs, and now his big warm hand is in her hair, stroking carefully, lest he pull too hard on the strands. “Tell me, Mako. Tell me. I want to hear it from you.”

Her throat constricts, painfully. “He’s gone, Raleigh,” she says. “He’s gone. My - the Marshal - he’s gone - ”

“He died for you and for me - him and Chuck Hansen, too,” Raleigh says. “I’ll mourn for Chuck, eventually. I won’t be able to help myself. Not unless I never want to see his father’s face again.”

“Hercules Hansen is Marshal now,” Mako whispers. “Am I allowed to hate him for that?”

“You’re allowed to _feel_ ,” Raleigh says.

Mako shivers, and with the moment she can feel the tears streaking down her cheeks, leaving dark spots on the fabric of Raleigh’s shirt.

“It’s okay, Mako, let it all out,” Raleigh says. His words are nearly unintelligible; his voice is nearly broken. He’s beginning to shake around her: his arms, that had been holding her steady, are trembling now.

She can make out the tenor of his thoughts, the name wound into his mourning, and she whispers it to him: “We’ll cry for them, you and I - you will cry for Stacker, and I will cry for Yancy....”

“Yes,” he manages to say, watery and soft.

She gathers his tears on her fingertips. Hot to the touch, salty when she presses them to her mouth.

One of them initiates the kiss, or perhaps it is both of them: a kiss that makes them both ache, a kiss that makes them pull at each other. An inexorable kiss, that neither of them can do without in this piece of time that finds them in tears. 

She explores his mouth gently, tastes the salt and the savor of him. Beneath the tears he is solid and warm and unexpectedly yielding: he tips his head down to hers, lets his mouth grow swollen and slack under her explorations.

When their noses knock together, she opens her eyes, and she thinks she can smile, a little, because Raleigh is looking at her like everything else in the world has fallen away.

She moves towards him, and their foreheads touch. A familiar gesture, this. She takes in his warmth, hoards it, lets it wash away the sharpest edges of her grief and of her pain.

He pulls her closer and she lets him. She wants to be closer. She puts her fingertips on his shoulders and she knows that the tension in him is falling away, little by little.

As naturally as they came together, they pull apart.

Mako looks away, sniffling very quietly.

“Mako,” Raleigh says.

She says his name, because she has to answer. “Raleigh.”

“I’m here.”

“I know,” she says. “Believe me, I know.” She taps her fingertips against her temple. “I can hear you in here, I can feel that you’re in my head.”

“And you’re in mine,” he says. “You’re in my head, and I want you in there.”

“Why?”

“Because.” He offers her half a smile. “Because I think it feels right.”

“We still have to know things about each other.” She isn’t precisely objecting.

“Yes.”

“What do we do - how do we do this?”

“We mourn,” Raleigh says, simply. “We tell each other what we’ve lost, so we can find something new.”

“Together?”

Raleigh blinks, and looks away. “Only if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t have to decide now,” she says.

“Of course not,” is the prompt response.

“Let’s stay here,” she says after a moment of silence. “Here in the Shatterdome, until they kick us out. Then here in Hong Kong, till we’re tired of this place. And maybe after that, we can decide. Once we can see past the tears.” 

Raleigh looks a little relieved, and she feels it, too - there are still weights on her heart, pulling it down into the depths, but she has him, and she can hang on to him for now.

“Okay,” Raleigh murmurs. “Okay.”

She cards her fingers briefly through his hair, wipes away the last of the tears from his eyes.

She lets him kiss her, just between her eyebrows, and she settles back into him. The world is just the two of them in this bed, right here and right now. They are still sobbing, and they are still broken, so they hang on, together.

**Author's Note:**

> Language note:
> 
> [1] - _Wakaranai_ \- can mean both "I don't know" and "I don't understand".


End file.
